South Korea is outraged Apple Inc and Google Inc have removed the Korean name of a group of disputed islets from some of their map services.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Tai-young says a demand to reverse the decision will be sent to both Google and Apple after they removed the Korean name Dokdo from their English- and Japanese-language maps.

"At the moment we heard Apple's new policy, our government official clearly expressed that we cannot accept it," he said.

Japan and South Korea both have contesting claims over the tiny islets, called Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima in Japanese.

Google followed by Apple, recently informed Seoul they will replace the name Dokdo with the Franco-English language name for the islands - Liancourt Rocks - on third country browsers, while "Takeshima" will substitute the Korean name on Japanese browsers.

But the name "Dokdo" will still be used in South Korean browsers.

Apple's decision comes less than a week after their internet rival Google, decided to subdivide the naming of the islands between it's Korean and Japanese language search engines.

The South Korean public has mostly echoed their nation's Foreign Ministry, complaining the decision confuses the rest of the world as to the sovereignty of the territory.

"I think it is wrong to indicate Dokdo, located in our territory, as Takeshima or any other name," said Park Hye-jung, a 26 year-old student from Seoul.